Maybe someone already said this, but here are some simple concepts (always in my personal opinion):
Why don't you take ideas from the best Mods? The Mod Ravenhearst in A17 is far better than the Vanilla game, it have a lot of good ideas on it, and the progression system makes you wanna keep playing it for hours and hours, not to mention how scary are the nights even in the day 30.
The Mod Darkness Falls in A17 is incredible, a little bit OP when you reach level 100, but it's really funny to play.
Same with Starvation in A16, plenty of incredible ideas, and it was hard AF, but in a good way, it looks like you don't care about that brilliant mods, you are focused in your own ideas.
I know it's hard to make all happy, it's a giant community and there will always be people angry about everything you do, but you should focus on the good ideas.
I don't like the new receipt system, but that's something personal, so I'm not gonna say anything bad about it.
And the most obvious thing, the regular spikes, I don't get why you removed them, you make hordes harder and harder, the AI is better at every patch, but we can't even defend our bases the first weeks. My first game in A17, I just made my typical A16 first anti-horde base, it got destroyed after 3 mins, that's so radical.
I play this game from many years ago, not a newb, but I'm totally running out ideas for my base (already made bunkers, 5 pilar normal base with iron bars, wall & trap classic, water base, killing corridors, etc..), checked a lot of videos in Youtube with new base ideas, but looks like people having the same issue, running out of ways to defend a normal base, not even a horde base, a normal base with your stuff.
At the end, the only way to survive the hordes the first weeks will be using bicycle or minibike all the night with enough fuel.
One of the strongest points of this game is the building part, if you make building a base useless, well...
7 Days is my favorite game, so I hope you start to check the good ideas from the best mods and add them to the game, and bring back the regular spikes, maybe nerfing their damage, but they are the key to survive the first days.